HighPoint RocketRAID 4320 SAS RAID Controller Review. Page 2

Today we will talk about a SAS RAID controller from HighPoint that belongs to the highest-performance controller series from this maker. It is based on a popular Intel IOP348 processor with 1.2 GHz frequency. Read more in our review!

The controller was installed into the mainboard’s PCI-Express x8 slot. We used Fujitsu MBA3073RC hard disk drives for this test session. They were installed into the standard boxes of the SC5200 system case and fastened with four screws at the bottom. The controller was tested with four and eight HDDs in the following modes:

RAID0

RAID10

Degraded 8-disk RAID10 with one failed HDD

RAID5

Degraded 8-disk RAID5 with one failed HDD

RAID6

Degraded 8-disk RAID6 with one failed HDD

Degraded 8-disk RAID6 with two failed HDDs

As we try to cover all possible array types, we will publish the results of degraded arrays. A degraded array is a redundant array in which one or more disks (depending on the array type) have failed but the array still stores data and performs its duties.

For comparison’s sake, we publish the results of a single Fujitsu MBA3073RC hard disk on an LSI SAS3041E-R controller as a kind of a reference point. We want to note that this combination of the HDD and controller has one known problem: its speed of writing in FC-Test is very low.

The stripe size is set at 64KB for each array type.

We used the latest BIOS available at the time of tests on the manufacturer’s website for the controller and installed the latest drivers. The BIOS was version 1.2.12.11 and the driver was version 1.2.19.4.